


And The Headstones Climbed Up The Hills

by Recourse



Series: We Shall All Be Healed [5]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Old Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 03:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recourse/pseuds/Recourse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe's waiting.</p><p>Follows on from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7103437/chapters/16140481">"Lead Us Not Into Temptation."</a> Pretty much needs that one for context.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And The Headstones Climbed Up The Hills

**Author's Note:**

> _There's the part you've braced yourself against and then_   
>  _There's the other part_

Joyce is the first to go.

It shouldn’t be a shock. She’s already had a heart attack, and the doctors said that another might be on the way. But it still sends Chloe into silence when she hears the news. For days afterward, she wanders around the house in a daze, letting Kate and Victoria buy tickets, arrange travel to that shithole town, one last time.

Somehow, Chloe always thought that she’d have Joyce forever. That the universe would figure out that she deserved to outlive Chloe, that she deserved to never, ever die. Fuck, it could’ve at least taken David first. Then Chloe would’ve made Mom move out here, and she could be close by and out of that fucking place for good, because Arcadia Bay is where good people go to die.

Now, standing in this graveyard, watching them lower the box into the earth, Chloe thinks, well, maybe it’s good that it didn’t take David first. As much as Chloe had hated the man, as much as she’s still sort of uneasy around him and not really his friend, Joyce had loved him quite a bit. Forgave quite a lot. Mom didn’t deserve to deal with the grief. She already lost one husband. And now, Chloe doesn’t have to pretend to care about David much at all. She lets him fade away into vague memory beside the last death in Arcadia Bay. She thinks of David rarely as the years roll on.

 

* * *

 

Victoria’s next.

She fights, God, she fights. Endlessly, tirelessly, no heed to money or time or suffering, as long as it will somehow excise the tumors growing in her chest. Chloe sits by her bedside at the hospital and holds her thin, papery hand and knows that this is fucking _wrong._ That the person who should have lung cancer is Chloe. She took years to quit smoking after Victoria did, it took Kate so long to convince her, her lungs should be filled with tar and tumors and Victoria should be _fine._ This is such bullshit. This is completely unfair.

Victoria promises. She promises a lot, even as her hair falls out and she struggles to even lift her head. She promises that she’ll get out of here. That when she does, she’ll write a book about it and be ‘an even bigger goddamn inspiration.’ She promises that she’ll go to the fucking Supreme Court after this and make it so that Kate can be listed as her wife too, so she could be here as often as Chloe is. Chloe looks at the cards and letters that surround her bed, endless well-wishes from students who say she inspired them, kicked their asses into gear, got them to making work that they’re proud of, that the world wants to see.

What has Chloe done, in comparison, with her time on this planet? Put out a couple records? Played a couple shows? Victoria is a real artist, a real inspiration, someone who’s helped so many people along their path, as Kate would say. Chloe deserves to be in that bed, dying from her own bad habits. Alone, not dragging Vic and Kate down with her, like she always has. Her fingers clench on Victoria’s hand, because she knows that all of Vic’s sound and fury can’t kill the sickness that’s eating through her. She’s going to be gone soon. Association with Chloe Price still has a hundred percent fatality rate, it just takes some time.

Victoria looks up at her, and the existential anger drains from her face. She was still beautiful, before the disease. A super-hot MILF, that’s what Chloe liked to call her, but the word that really held in her mind was _handsome._ A handsome woman. Chloe always kind of liked that phrase, and it used to describe what age had made Victoria into so well. Stately, mature, lines of experience, not decay. Now, she’s skeletal. Fading out. A burning photograph.

“Hey,” Victoria murmurs, lifting her other hand and brushing it against Chloe’s face. “Tell Kate I love her, all right? And I love you. So much. That’s why I’m getting the fuck out of here. I don’t care how much it fucking costs.”

Chloe nods, her mouth dry. Victoria is lying. Maybe she doesn’t know that she’s lying, but Chloe does.

 

* * *

 

When they get home from the funeral, Kate sits with Chloe in the bedroom and holds her while she sobs. Chloe’d meant to leave her ring there, make it part of the grave, but of course she couldn’t, in the end. She twirls the onyx between her fingers, over and over again, the last thing that touched her before the incinerator turned her to ash. So many of these little objects, spread throughout the home they’d all shared for so long. Collars of dead pets. Old mixtapes labeled **VICTORIA SONGS** and _Pirate Power_ and _The Sunset Tree, for Chloe._ Bracelets and photographs. Dishes and furniture. So many dead. So many more yet to die.

Their daughter sits out in the living room, no doubt hurting as much as Chloe is, or more. Chloe never felt like a mom to her, it was always Kate and Victoria who really seemed to be raising the kid, teaching her how to be a person. Chloe was just the wacky aunt, if she’s honest with herself, an enabler more than an inspiration or a guardian. Chloe should’ve left a long time ago. Before she had to feel this pain and know that she’s out there dealing with this too and Chloe can’t help her, can’t ever help her, should just be fucking dead. Nobody would miss her as much as so many people miss Victoria.

“I’m here, Chloe,” Kate says quietly, squeezing Chloe’s hand. Chloe turns to look at her. She didn’t age badly, either. She looks like exactly what she is; a powerful old grandmother, devoted to God, that gold cross still around her neck, her gray hair in a perfect bun. “I’m still here,” Kate repeats. “And we’ll see her again.”

Chloe wishes she could share Kate’s faith. Kate likes to say, “Hell is empty,” and Chloe wishes she could believe in that. Believe that there’s more left of Victoria and Rachel and Joyce and Max than just the memories contained in her head and Kate’s and the little trinkets and treasures in this house. But if there’s a God out there, one with the power to shape reality, then fuck him. He’s obviously screwing things up. Victoria is _dead._ Before Chloe. That’s fucking wrong. Failing grade.

But Kate’s certainty holds her. At least Kate can see some good out there, in that black void people call the future. Chloe tries to hang onto her. To pray that someday she can see Kate’s light in the darkness, too.

 

* * *

 

Jack’s a shock.

He was always their frontman, no matter what they said about the band being a mutual and collaborative effort. He was the one who wanted stage lights and big shows, and while he didn’t get to stadiums, he had his dream, in the end.

Chloe always felt like that man was invincible, despite his problems. Kate knew she couldn’t do any more tours, not even small ones, after Victoria’s death, but Jack kept soldiering on regardless, pushing everyone to finish one last album, one last song, before Chloe and Kate finally said goodbye. Fourteen’s an odd number, he kept saying, which was blatantly bullshit but like a lot of things Jack said, it made sense despite that.

Jack died out of her sight. Like Joyce. He didn’t die beside Molly, either. He died alone one night after a solo gig in some bar in Manhattan somewhere, clobbered by a cab. Chloe hears the news from Molly shortly before Molly drops off the face of the earth and surfaces somewhere in New York. Now that Jack’s not coming back, she’s done with this state for good.

Chloe lies awake beside Kate that night after they both cry themselves sick. Everyone’s leaving. Kate will leave too, someday. Chloe wants to get there first, so badly that she wants to take it out of the hands of whatever incompetent God runs this shitshow, do it herself, but Kate's fingers brushing over her scars stop that. Kate deserves to die while loved, not alone. Chloe knows how much it hurts to be alone. She’ll know again soon.

 

* * *

 

Chloe wakes up beside a corpse.

She tries to stir her, to move her, and when she realizes nothing’s working and she grabs her hand and runs her fingers over her wedding ring, the gold one with the sapphire in it, she feels nothing but cold flesh. A winter storm rages outside the window as Chloe holds tight, praying that Kate’s God actually exists, which makes no fucking sense but God dammit, God dammit she can’t be. She can’t be gone. Somewhere she has to be living on, being beautiful and kind and wonderful and drawing things for picture books and she _can’t be dead._

There’s no pulse.

There’s no Kate, not anymore.

Chloe leaps up from the bed and stalks into the bathroom, tearing open the medicine cabinet, looking. For anything that will kill her and stop this old familiar pain from tearing her to shreds again. She catches sight of herself in the mirror, a crazed, withered old crone desperately wanting to die, and she covers her face with her hands and screams.

Kate’s painkillers from when she had her hip replaced. Those would work. Kill the burning in her for good. Kate’s not here. Kate’s not here, like she always said she was.

She reaches into the cabinet and pulls out the bottle, wrenches off the cap, and stops. She stares into the mass of medicine and thinks of swallowing every last tablet. It would end this. All of this.

But Kate wouldn’t want that. Victoria, certainly, wouldn’t want that. Her scars are proof of that. All these years on this earth are proof of that, that the best people she ever knew never wanted her dead. That’s why she’s alone here at the end of her life and she’s still healthy, still mobile, still alive, still alive. She places the bottle back in the cabinet and curls up on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. She has to wait. If Kate was ever right, she doesn’t want to get up there and tell her that she sped the process along. Left their daughter to grieve alone.

She has to wait.

She doesn’t want to wait.

 

* * *

 

Chloe wakes up at six A.M. again.

The house is so empty.

That’s her usual morning thought, these days. How quiet and cold this once-wonderful place has become. How music and laughter have left it.

She swallows her sadness like she always does as she heads into the bathroom. She takes a long look at herself, and despite everything, she still kind of likes what she sees. Crazy old coot. Punk queen past her prime, but still kicking. Patti Smith reborn for a new generation. She still shaves the side of her head, even with her hair a thin shock of white. It makes her look like some kind of Tim Burton character and that suits her just fine. She’s haunting the world before she’s even dead yet and that thought feels strangely poetic.

She straps her guitar to her back once she’s dressed and showered. She learned most of their songs, acoustic versions, after Jack died. She has to keep them all alive, somehow. Keep their memory. People recognize her, still, to her shock. They never hit it big, but around Boulder she’s become something of a legend. Someone worth seeking out when you’re new in town. Someone you can invite to an open mic or a little show in a coffee shop and get a decent showing of people from the university, doing their homework by attending.

She walks down to the mall and thinks. She sort of hates how well she’s aged. She remembers, in Kate’s last years, how she’d come home exhausted just from walking around campus all day, needing Chloe to massage her feet. Chloe can’t go as far or as fast up the trails as she once did, and yet still she goes out there sometimes, into nature, alone. Where quiet is natural and not a symptom of a fading life.

She sits down in the center of Pearl Street and strums, sings. Even her voice is still decent, all things considered. She’s not as loud as she used to be, but the gravel in her throat adds character and dimension to these old tunes. It feels right, to still be here, despite it all. And it makes her a little bit of money.

When she takes a break for a moment, posting up on a bench and sighing, a kid sits down next to her. Blond guy, little nervous-looking, but he’s looking right at her and licking his lips.

“Hey, you’re Chloe Price, right?”

Chloe breaks out her smile. “The one and only. Far as I know, anyhow.”

“Oh, man.” He wrings his hands nervously. “Man, I thought people were joking when they said you still hung around here.”

“Where else would I be?” Chloe asks him.

“I just...damn. Just wanted to say that, like, my dad listened to Misaimed Massacre a lot when I was a kid, and...I dunno. Your music changed my life, once I started digging into your older stuff. You guys were incredible.”

“I know we were,” Chloe says with a smirk, tilting her head towards the sky and smiling. “But thanks anyway, kid.”

“Are you still writing new stuff?”

“What would be the point? I’m just here waiting.” Chloe shrugs.

“Waiting for what?”

“To see my wives again.”

He looks down. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, man. People like you make me glad I’m still sticking around.” She punches him in the shoulder. “Fans. Always loved ‘em. Not as much as Jack did, but, y’know.”

He runs his fingers through his hair. “You gonna be here tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

 

* * *

 

Liz calls that night.

“Just wanted to see how you’re doing,” Chloe hears out of the phone as she settles down into the couch and misses two warm bodies beside her.

“Doing as good as I ever was,” Chloe tells her.

“Mom, that’s not a good answer.”

“Only one I got. And don’t call me ‘mom.’”

“You’re the only mom I’ve got left, so now you get the capital M. _Moooom._ ”

“Who gave you that mouth?” Chloe accuses as she flips through channels. “Was it Vic?”

“It was you.”

“Nope, I’m blaming Vic. Besides, you don’t get to be all, ‘oh, woe is me, I’ve only got one mom left’ when most people only get one.”

Liz laughs. “Technically I think I had four, total.”

“Yeah, but fuck your bio-mom, quite frankly.”

“No arguments there.” She hears Liz sigh. “I just...we haven’t talked in a while. Not since Christmas, and you’re always the one I really worried about.”

“Yeah, me having a suicidal breakdown when you had your first birthday with us probably helped with that. Sorry for saddling you with issues all over the goddamn place.” Chloe’s vision darkens as she remembers how scared Liz had looked. Poor little eight-year-old, thrown into this insane family situation, with two good, honest, loving people and then there was her, the indie-band bassist with no real job and no prospects and nothing useful to teach her--

“I’m worried because I love you. And because I want to make sure that you’ll be here for this Christmas, too.” There’s a pause. “You don’t have to keep living all alone out there.”

“I’m okay, Liz. Really. It’s...it’s like Kate always said. Life is fucking rough. I’m never gonna get free of that. I never _was_ free of that. But there’s always something out there, every day, that makes me glad I stuck around. Even for a second. There’s always something to live for.”

“I don’t think Kate ever said it quite like that.”

“Well, she’s dead, so I can say she said whatever I want.”

She hears Liz’s sharp inhale and curses herself. Never really learned how to behave, did you, Price?

“Mom, just...our door’s always open. Always gonna be, for you. If you ever wanna move on.”

“I don’t. I’m okay with waiting.”

“You’re not that old!” Liz insists.

“Year older than both of ‘em.”

“Yeah, but...”

“I know I’m super fucking healthy for my age, all right? You probably think I’m gonna live forever. But, Liz, I’m old. I take a shitload of vitamins and pills and shit every day to remind me of that. And it’s fine. My will’s all set up. I’m ready to go.”

Liz chokes back a sob, and Chloe hates herself again. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “Just...When my dad died, I went crazy. And I’m not gonna be around to help you like I was when Kate died. The only thing that matters to me is knowing you’re gonna be okay when I’m gone. And I think you will. Even I couldn’t screw up what Vic and Kate did for you.”

“You were my mom too,” Liz says hoarsely. “You always say stuff like this, but...when I was in high school, when I first got diagnosed, you were the one who really understood me. I’m not gonna be okay when you die. It’s going to hurt like hell. I know it will.”

“Yeah. It will.” Chloe swallows. “Believe me, I know. But I mean that you’ll survive. Like we all did. All the rough stuff. I know they...we all made you a survivor. Like us.”

“You did.” Liz breathes in. “You especially. You’re right.”

“Okay.” Chloe runs her hand down her face. “Sorry I’m such a fucking downer all the time.”

“I should’ve kept a running tally of how many times you’ve said that.”

Chloe chuckles. “All right, I’m an old lady and it’s like ten o’clock. I’m going to bed. Tell your husband I’ll haunt his ass if he fucks with you.”

“We’ve been married ten years, mom. He knows.”

“Tell him again. Do it for the old lady.”

“All right, fine. Love you, Mom.”

“I love you too.”

Chloe flips off the TV and heads back into that too-big bed, falling facefirst into it. Another day of waiting. She wants so badly to just not wake up, like Kate. What an easy death for her. She thinks about how she’ll die a lot these days, thinks about getting hit by a bus on Pearl Street or throwing herself off a cliff while hiking or just sticking her head in the bathtub until water fills her lungs. She doesn’t believe in Kate’s God. Not really. But there’s still this voice, that says, _Well, maybe she was right._ And even now, she can’t see herself explaining, “I got fuckin’ bored waiting to die so I did it myself.” And she can’t see herself leaving Liz with that as her epitaph, and she can’t see it in the obituary or as the final note in the Wikipedia page for their band.

“Died peacefully in her sleep.” What a crazy way to end Chloe Price’s story. One last fuck-you to the world that took everything from her.

She won’t give it the fucking satisfaction of seeing her falter now.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> _And I dreamt_   
>  _Of a factory_   
>  _Where they manufactured what I needed_   
>  _Using shiny new machines_   
>  _And the headstones climbed up the hills_
> 
> Title and endnotes taken from "Palmcorder Yamja," by the Mountain Goats. Beginning note taken from "Liza Forever Minnelli." 
> 
> Thank you.


End file.
